REQUIRES A $39/y SUBSCRIPTION
-
Edited: In my original review I thought this was a monthly subscription, however after posting it I noticed I was mistaken and it is yearly. However I still think 39/y is steep for a plugin that, for the most part, will get set up and go untouched for most of the year. However if it works well then $39 is reasonable.
-
This condition is located in the description:
Automatically generate, email and download PDF documents with Gravity Forms and Gravity PDF.
and rather explicitly under Requirements (pay special attention to the last line):
Gravity PDF can be run on most shared web hosting without any issues. It requires PHP 5.4+ (PHP 7.0+ recommended) and at least 64MB of WP Memory (128MB+ recommended). You’ll also need to be running WordPress 4.2+ and have Gravity Forms 1.9+.
Therefore, it isn’t a stretch to conclude that saying it requires Gravity Forms is merely a summary of the product, not a criticism of it. Certainly not criticism enough to knock it down two whole stars.
I’d also point out that the free plug-in depository (and this is a free plug-in) is no stranger to plug-ins that depend upon, or piggy-back on, other plug-ins. This was purpose-built to make use of the Gravity Forms framework. It even co-opted part of its name.
Additionally, the Gravity Forms subscription itself pays for initial access to the product, yes, but afterwards simply to continue updates and support. Meaning that past a certain point, it isn’t even technically a requirement to pay to use Gravity PDF since neither it nor the main Gravity Forms plug-in stop working without that subscription.
All this is for the sake of clarity; the plug-in developers can speak for themselves and I am not trying to position this as a “defense,” especially since it’s not under attack.
I don’t want people to miss out on the opportunity to use this plug-in. The word “review” is used above but there isn’t one; there is not a single detail provided about what it offers or how it operates. The verbiage “if it works well” seems to indicate an attempt wasn’t even made to use it or install it, so clearly there’s no basis to assign it any value in a star system, good or bad, because it hasn’t been used, just merely speculated upon.
The ultimate irony is what a crazy good deal it is, since everything you get from this plug-in is offered as a paid service, but for a couple hours of reading and testing, even a beginning developer can make impressive-looking documents on the fly that more than rival most actual desktop software. I still don’t understand how they afford to both release it and maintain it for free, because it could cost a grand and I know people who’d jump on it.
PHP is the only server-side language I know, and I know as much as someone would after reading a bunch of tutorials (although I have a lot of experience at that level =) and we used it to build paper receipts and membership cards for an entire flag football league, including hitching it to the PayPal add-on and having both the office admin and the player each get sent their separate e-mails with attachments.
I always read the terrible reviews when looking at a product, so I’d never discourage people voicing their opinions. No developer is a saint and no product is perfect. Unfortunately, all across the plug-in repository there are people either using reviews for support (right next to a link for support) or reviewing something they haven’t used. If that doesn’t go away, it at least needs to be clarified each time by someone with legitimate trials in using the software.
- The topic ‘REQUIRES A $39/y SUBSCRIPTION’ is closed to new replies.
